Chicago Avenue Station

The elevated trains, the "El," that run above street traffic in Chicago went into operation at the end of the 19th century. They were built in the middle of streets, where they remain to this day, rather than in alleys or right-of-ways, as it was determined that buying up property and demolishing buildings to clear a pathway for the trains would have been too time-consuming. When the "El" first went into operation in Chicago, the New York Academy of Medicine warned that "El" trains "prevented the normal development of children, threw convalescing patients into relapses and caused insomnia, exhaustion, hysteria, paralysis, deafness and death." These claims were more than slightly exaggerated, and even after one hundred years, the "El" today remains an efficient way of traveling around the metropolitan city area.